Why the war on wood burners?

Boris Johnson’s government seems to be banning things first and looking for justifications later. Following on from its nonsensical plan to phase out diesel and petrol cars, it confirmed on Friday that it also wants to ban the sale of coal and ‘wet’ wood for use in domestic stoves and fires in England.

The press office at the Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) declares that the government is taking ‘bold action to cut pollution from household burning’. It claims that wood-burning stoves and coal fires are ‘the single largest source of the pollutant PM2.5’ – that is, airborne ‘particulate matter’ with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres. For comparison, that’s tiny stuff that is about three per cent of the diameter of a human hair.

DEFRA says that domestic burning emits ‘twice the contribution of industry and three times the contribution of road transport’, adding that ‘these measures will help to tackle a form of pollution that penetrates deep into our hearts, lungs, and blood, and has been identified by the World Health Organisation as the most harmful air pollutant for human health’.

The new rules mean that the sale of traditional coal and wood that has not been dried will be banned. Bags of coal and smaller bags of ‘wet wood’ will be phased out by February 2021, with sales of loose coal direct to customers prohibited by 2023. Homeowners will be told to burn dry wood or smokeless fuel instead – both of which are far more expensive. Alternative fuels will only be permitted if they have a very low sulphur content and only emit a small amount of smoke.

While a ban on these ‘dirty fuels’ might sound like a positive thing, there are major problems with this policy.

First, the risk posed by air pollution is far less clear than campaigners would have us believe. There are recurring claims that tens of thousands of people die each year in the UK from air pollution. The best guess is that the risk of dying increases by six per cent per year for every 10 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic metre you’re exposed to. But it really is an educated guess. The estimate hides enormous uncertainty. For example, the studies don’t measure individual exposure, but are based on snapshots of levels in different areas. So the risks of PM2.5 could be much higher or lower, and they could be greatly influenced by confounding factors. Are people who are exposed to more pollution also more likely to be poor, for example?

Second, the UK’s air quality hasn’t been this good for centuries. The decline of industry, the long-term switch to gas, improvements in car-exhaust emissions and more have meant a steady decline in pollution. DEFRA’s statistical release on UK air quality, published in 2019, suggests that stoves and open fires have had some impact on air quality, but it’s not enormous. Yes, there are bumps in pollution levels in the morning and especially in the evening, as those stoves and fires are lit, but the difference between mid-afternoon and mid-evening is not huge. The combined effect of other forms of pollution is clearly more important.

The experience of the Great Smog in London in 1952 is testament to the fact that burning coal in large, dense urban areas can be a problem. As a result, it is banned in many cities in the UK. Extending that ban to wet logs might make some sense, too. But to ban the sale of these fuels completely, in a manner that will affect everyone in England – even in the majority of places where air quality is not a problem – is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

For some people, burning coal and wood is a necessity, as they are not connected to the gas network and heating their homes with electric heaters is too expensive. But even where a stove or fire is not essential, it is still a great pleasure for millions of people. Forcing people to use smokeless fuels, which are far more expensive and less aesthetically pleasing, should be justified with hard evidence.

Just for good measure, under this policy logs would need to have no more than 20 per cent moisture to be permitted for sale. That’s difficult to achieve by just leaving them to dry out in the air, so that means they will usually need to be kiln-dried. Sticking logs in a big oven to dry out is surely going to add to the UK’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Oh, the irony.

This ban is excessive and the evidence to justify it is weak. Ministers and civil servants must be too busy listening to the lobbying of NGOs to take account of the interests of wider society.

Rob Lyons is science and technology director at the Academy of Ideas and a spiked columnist.

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David Bunney

27th February 2020 at 11:19 pm

Nobody in their right mind tries to burn wet-wood as it doesn’t work and smokes… but the question is what % of moisture will the government consider wet and why can’t a tree surgeon who has cut a tree down at number 3 give or sell the wood to number 10 who will put it in their log-store for a good six to ten months and season it themselves… this eco-fascism is really too much !! Any sensible person only burns dry wood; as for coal if you build your fire correctly and get it up to a good high temperature then I don’t see much smoke or particles… then we come on to the multiple science disciplines coming together here… firstly there is the issue of exposures and concentrations and what it does to your lungs and your other organs once in your blood… I am not an expert on this but I would guess it is being exaggerated like every other law needing justification for taxing us more or taking away our freedoms…. then there is the boundary layer meteorology and mixing of pollutants… this is where I do know a bit and here I would say that smoke coming out of one or two chimneys is going to do very little to particulate concentrations… if you are indeed standing over your bonfire with your head in the smoke coming off it then you are going to choke and cough… but if it’s a rainy and windy January evening and you are in your house and your neighbour or even more likely someone a street or more away from you has a fire going… then are you exposed to high concentrations of dangerous particles??? You cannot take a single reading in one place and consider it representative for conditions even a street away… as anyone knows when they have a smoky bonfire if you are directly down-wind within a 50 meters or so you will smell the smoke but it also depends on weather conditions of wind, and temperature, how turbulent the wind is and the atmospheric temperature profile… in the specific case of your house emissions it depends on how air is funnelled around buildings creating turbulent wake… and mixing down stream… which both spreads the smoke out and reduces its concentrations in a given m3 of air… another point is how high the air comes out of a chimney stack… if you have a high chimney above the rooftops of the surrounding area, it is quite possible the smoke and particles don’t come back down to the ground… it is only really in extremely cold conditions with still air, already quite humid and misty and a temperature inversion close to rooftop height that smoke from a high number of houses all burning wet logs together at the same time might create smogs and particulate concentrations that might harm people. There might be future conditions when people who have been made poor by stupid net-zero energy policies can no longer afford electricity and/or periods when there is no wind or solar power output from still anticyclonic conditions; under these circumstances people might move to burn wood en-mass if it is the only way not to freeze to death and then we might see the return of the London Smog… however if you are a farm house in the countryside or 1 out of 20 or 30 houses in a street burning seasoned logs in a modern stove at proper temperatures then your pollution and health impact on neighbours is going to be next to zero… so for goodness sakes will the government leave alone…

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

24th February 2020 at 10:30 pm

I love my Chesney 5kw wood burner and will defend it to the death.

steve moxon

24th February 2020 at 6:35 pm

Well I wasn’t going to get a wood-burning stove for my empty hearth, given the inconvenience and mess, but I might now well do so.
The government is on track to create a real anti-‘green’ movement.
By the time they try to get around to forcing everyone to take out their gas boilers, the nation will be one big bunch of refuseniks.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

24th February 2020 at 10:31 pm

Why not build a coal-fired power station in your back garden? That will certainly annoy the Wokeists.

Rufus Chacalaca

25th February 2020 at 3:49 pm

In the meantime the government has converted their coal plants to burn wood pellets imported from the US.

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James Knight

24th February 2020 at 5:19 pm

I’m all for cleaner air. Particulates are a menace to anyone with respiratory issues. But it is hard to see plod rocking up at the front door to arrest people for the crime of “burning wet wood”.

jessica christon

24th February 2020 at 9:45 pm

Before I would have thought they would never call people to “check their thinking”, but they do.

David McAdam

24th February 2020 at 5:11 pm

A cynical move designed to appeal to the vanity intoxicated, self-appointed custodians of the planet and beyond.

Puddy Cat

24th February 2020 at 4:31 pm

The majority of of properties being built today do not have chimneys. The only properties that demand such open fires are the old draughty sort which, when sold, are modernised throughout generally (sadly). Central heating normally ensues. So the only properties likely to burn open fires are those of an older age group who, probably, due to the strictures of income, have no alternative. There is a natural decline in such usage and to empower even more apparatchiks to monitor the population is edging towards tyranny.

The flip-flop over diesel engines and wood burners is the sort of ill considered guff that does little for progress or sustainable development. The reason why government seems so tolerant of car jams is that the cost is against the motorist but condoning such regular infestations of traffic chaos are perhaps the biggest pollutant on the planet. Cars are meant to travel at economical speeds (published in most user manuals) but the chances of driving continuously at say fifty miles an hour in this country are negligible. If the average speed of traffic could be upped to such a figure the necessity for vehicular transport bans would be negated.

It is not the cold that is killing people in Britain as much as the cost of keeping warm. It is self-evident that a substantial number of people are thrown into the dilemma of food purchase or fuel, look at the proliferation of food banks.

We constantly carp about being in the pockets of despots for our fuel supplies and yet the rare earth metals that are demanded in electronic vehicles put us in the way of other of grim intent. Whereas as carbon fuel is plentiful and industries and commerce can rely on them the tiny deposits of uncommon materials will only direct us to the reuse of carbon fuels at some later date.

Valuable time is being lost in the scientific pursuit of real answers to our dilemma. Subsidies are a a repeat of the lack of a sovereign wealth fund, such as that which Norway installed for its North Sea profits. Cars are a fundamental necessity for the greater number of individuals not attached to large conurbations. They are also beyond the long arm of trades unions, which is more that you can say about HS2.

In a capitalist society price and service should be the keynotes, that denotes efficiency and research and development. A government that can free a service from nationalisation only then to cap its profits does not seem to have a handle on what earning and spending do realistically. Fuel is a subsidy element then a producer distributor element, get rid of the subsidy. Why do we not just pay our wages into government coffers and have them give back to us a stipend, it’s heading that way.

The use of domestic coal will subside but the abandonment of carbon powered vehicles is a blow too far against choice and the sustainability of the capitalist system

Ven Oods

24th February 2020 at 3:26 pm

“Why the war on wood burners?”
Well, if nothing else it’ll speed up the demise of all those Brexiteer pensioners. Of course, one might wonder why that would be the policy of a party that was just helped into power by that same group. Odd chaps, politicians.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

24th February 2020 at 10:26 pm

‘Well, if nothing else it’ll speed up the demise of all those Brexiteer pensioners.’ — Death by carbon monoxide poisoning or death by freezing. Hmmm.

Jim Lawrie

24th February 2020 at 2:45 pm

To keep logs at 20% moisture content they would have to be wrapped in plastic or stored in a dry room – heated by?

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David Slongfis

24th February 2020 at 1:44 pm

Has a burning whiff of the sort of regulation we used to get from the EU about it. Also seems to attack two core groups of Tory voters, the English village poor and the English village middle class wood burner lot. It will empower people to grass on their neighbors too. Yet ultimately it seems to go against a deep historic conservative right of an Englishman to sit besides his fire.

bf bf

24th February 2020 at 12:08 pm

Wood pellet fed “rocket” stoves are the solution

Bill Bedford

24th February 2020 at 12:05 pm

What many people don’t seem to know is that during warm dry periods during the summer, when the wind is from the south PM2.5 levels can go up around 600ppm. Twenty times what is normal. This dust is entirely natural, as it originates with sand blown here from the Sahara.

David J

24th February 2020 at 12:38 pm

We have been covered a few times by Saharan sand falling on our hilltop Buckinghamshire village.
As for ‘wet wood’ nobody buys it to burn, except perhaps the first time, when you quickly learn that it needs drying before it will burn properly.
But in the smallish print, the ban concerns only small quantities, so maybe UKG should have flagged that out properly.

NEIL DATSON

24th February 2020 at 11:07 am

So the proposal is not to ban log burners, open fires and solid fuel stoves etc, but the sale and marketing of coal and ‘wet wood’? Well, good luck with that. Coal is a largely regulated trade although I believe that in some areas (the Forest of Dean for example) it is somewhat informal. ‘Wet wood’, on the other hand, is almost invariably informal; ‘grey market’ if not ‘black market’. Many ‘harvest’ logs for their own use, large quantities are exchanged for different goods or services. Is the government going to appoint a huge army of ‘fireplace inspectors’ empowered to forcibly enter an Englishman’s Home in the name of the Green Party or Extinction Rebellion?

steve moxon

24th February 2020 at 6:29 pm

Exactly. There aren’t police to actually police, so here will be absolutely nobody to enforce this.

Jerry Owen

24th February 2020 at 9:58 am

The combination of banning coal, wood and gas is going to result in many needless deaths.
Johnson is a disaster. The northeners will punish him at the next GE… And deservedly so.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

24th February 2020 at 11:05 am

There is no question that Johnson will betray the northerners. He is a Tory – it’s in their DNA.

Ven Oods

24th February 2020 at 3:32 pm

An interesting notion…
Presumably, those 21 Tories who got kicked out had their DNA modified as they left, and those who were readmitted to Tory-hood must have had their DNA re-booted?

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

24th February 2020 at 10:29 pm

OK, I’ll make an exception for Michael Heseltine.

Philip Humphrey

24th February 2020 at 7:35 am

Although at heart I think government should interfere as little as possible with people’s lives, I do have a problem with wood burning stoves in built up areas where there are other houses in proximity. Seems to me that it’s a balance of one person’s right to clean air against another’s to burn wood or coal, and I think the former should take priority. Wood burners are a problem because they do not burn cleanly, but control the rate of combustion by restricting the air supply so there will be partially burned products, particles and possible carcinogens going up the chimney. I don’t have a problem with wood burners in isolated rural houses, but in built up areas where there is a gas supply there is no need for them.

Jerry Owen

24th February 2020 at 10:03 am

We burn wood and coal, but don’t live in a built up area as such, but I can understand others not liking it.
I disagree with you in that if gas is available there is no need for burning coal and wood. We save money by turning the central heating down when we have a fire and we just heat the room we are in.
Lastly it’s a pleasure to have a fire. Our government is hell bent on destroying so much that we rightly take for granted, you should oppose that.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

24th February 2020 at 11:07 am

‘Our government is hell bent on destroying so much that we rightly take for granted, you should oppose that.’ — It’s a Tory regime – what did you expect?

Jerry Owen

24th February 2020 at 11:35 am

ZP
Pathetic post.

Jerry Owen

24th February 2020 at 11:38 am

It’s an elected government not regime or one party state as you idiotically believe. The eco war is led by the socialists / civil service and quangos that the government needs rid of.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

24th February 2020 at 10:28 pm

JERRY OWEN — Tory REGIME lol.

Dominic Straiton

24th February 2020 at 6:45 am

Churning out dumb law that no one takes any notice of creates habitual and casual law breakers. This is really bad for society. Talking on your phone while driving is another example.

SNJ Morgan

24th February 2020 at 4:30 am

I’ve been trying to make Johnson out, and I think Melanie Phillips has him down to a tee (as usual with her observational powers).

He is a man that goes in any direction he thinks the wind is blowing. Unfortunately for him, and for us, he now thinks the wind is blowing in the direction of a carbon free future.

He is going to be an unmitigated disaster for our country, regardless of what version of Brexit he deigns to deliver.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

24th February 2020 at 11:06 am

He doesn’t have a great record with infrastructure projects, or telling the truth.

Jerry Owen

24th February 2020 at 11:39 am

ZP
He was a successful Mayor of London.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

24th February 2020 at 10:28 pm

JERRY OWEN — The failed new buses and evil garden bridge…

Jim Lawrie

24th February 2020 at 1:47 pm

All he wanted was to be Prime Minister. Now that he is, we can see that being Prime Minister is beyond him, hence the reliance on Mr Cummings. I expect a leadership challenge by mid-2004 at the latest.

Jim Lawrie

24th February 2020 at 3:02 pm

Pardon me. mid-2003

Anakei Ess

24th February 2020 at 12:51 am

If you have a log fire it makes no sense to burn wet wood any way as it smokes excessively , soots up the chimney and throws out little heat. I suspect most people who burn firewood know this and will season their wood before burning.

Ian Bradbury

24th February 2020 at 9:27 am

Absolutely true. But there are two major issues that make this seem more like legislation intended to bolster the large companies, such as Certainly Wood, who have been lobbying for this.

First, it will prevent small scale sellers offering smaller quantities of wood for home seasoning, and secondly getting wood down to 20% moisture is difficult without a kiln.

Meaty Beaty

24th February 2020 at 1:44 pm

I have no problems getting wood down to less than 20% by leaving in my wood for 2-3 yrs partially covered with tarpaulin. (I use a moisture meter to check this – as I also make furniture from it and require dry hardwoods.)
Tory policy seems nuts to me and has that “made-up in London” feel about it.

Ian Bradbury

24th February 2020 at 3:05 pm

So in the interests of science I went and looked today. Intrrnal moisture level from some wood cut, split and stacked two years ago 21%. Exactly the same as my neighbour’s kiln dried logs delivered in October. Both logs are beech, both burn quickly and well. I’m sure below 20% is attained in summer, less convinced it remains so in a Highland winter.

Jim Lawrie

24th February 2020 at 12:13 pm

Yip. Another case of politicians spotting that people are already doing what is required but passing a law to codify that athen publicly congratulating themselves on what they have “achieved”. As was the case with the smoking bans introduced when people were already giving up in large numbers. Like we do not know what is in our best interests. Or how to dry or own logs.
I heard a government minister on the radio claiming wet logs are up to 57% water. For white pine the thing would have to be immersed for a year and then put straight on the fire.

Next target will be those who gather and burn driftwood, with the government claiming to have saved us all from chlorine gas poisoning.
There is some amount of dross put out on the whole subject of burning anything.